PER ITALIANO
Hello again everyone.. It's been a while...
Today I'll write about a delicious sauce which we love and prepare very often this period of the year.
I've got the inspiration from Gaz Oakley's yummy Cheesy Stuffed Squash recipe. After many trials and several changes I've managed to come up with a very delicious and versatile sauce. Don't get me wrong, the origial recipe also is just good as it is. My intention was to create a sauce which would be as tasty and good for a whole food plant based diet.
You'll have a good amount of sauce with this recipe which is very helpful to have something ready in the fridge. You can always freeze the excess amount if there is any left.
You can use our Roasted Winter Squash Sauce in many different ways and serve very beautifully stuffed in the halved / emptied squashes.
Within the next days I'll share some of the dishes I prepared with this sauce so that I can give you some ideas and inspiration.
These days in the supermarkets and farmer markets you can see a wide range of winter squashes that come in many different types, colours and sizes. The ones I come across more often are Butternut Squash and red or green squashes (They are all just called winter squash so I don't know the exact type of the squash but judging from the look I believe they are kabochas, mantovana, delica.. etc)
When I buy squashes to make our Roasted Squash Sauce I try to pick smaller ones. Because, as I use the flesh of the squashes for the sauce, I use the halved and emptied squashes as a bowl to serve meal and they look just gorgeous.
I don't mind much about the exact weight of the ingredients in this recipe. There are different varieties of squashes and even the ones from the very same variety come in different sizes. In today's recipe I used 2 butternut squashes and 1 green winter squash. I try to find squashes that weigh between 1 kg - 1 kg 250 g. Of course you can use bigger sized ones as well, however, if you'd like to use them as serving bowl per portion, I'd recommend you not to go over 1.5 kg.
I use 3 winter squashes for this recipe and 2 of them are always butternut squashes.
Here come the ingredients...
Ingredients:
2 butternut squashes (1 kg each)
1 green winter squash (1 kg 300 g)
700 g leek
10 - 15 fresh sage leaves (20 - 25)
4 Tbsp nutritional yeast
10 g freshly squeezed lemon juice
Spices, Optional;*(1)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Bechamel sauce:
1 L organic soy milk
100 g organic brown rice flour*(2)
50 g organic whole sesame tahini
1/2 - 1 tsp salt
10 g freshly squeezed lemon juice*(3)
*(1) I don't always use the spices, sometimes I leave the garlic powder out. It is up to your preference.
*(2) I use a variety of flours depending on what I have in the kitchen. To give you an example, in my previous bechamel I used 40 g of tapioca flour, 40 g of whole buckwheat flour and 20 g of chickpea flour.
*(3) In a whole food plant based diet the consumption of salt is discouraged. Even though I've reduced our use of salt a lot I couldn't manage to go entirely salt-free. You can leave the salt out or try to use the least amount possible.
Preparation:
- Using a large knife cut squashes in half lengthwise.
- Place them in the oven tray with the cut side up.
- Roast them in a preheated oven at 180°C until softened. (Cooking time may depend on your oven and the size of your squashes. Mine took 1 and half hour.) Scoop out the seeds.
- To prepare bechamel, place all the ingredients in a pot and mix with a mixer or (a robot) until smooth. Cook bechamel stirring continuously until the mixture has thickened to a creamy sauce..
(Thermomix owners => Place all bechamel ingredients in TM Bowl and cook for 10 - 12 minutes at 90°C Speed 4.)
- Cut leeks into small pieces.
- Chop sage leaves into small pieces and transfer into a large non-stick pan together with leeks. Cook until leek softens.
- Scoop out the squash flesh carefully. If you plan to use them as serving bowl don't go too deep until the peel. They may lose their form, get cracked and fall. So scoop out the flesh gently leaving a cm of flesh around the edges. (Unfortunately I don't have any photos specifically taken for this step but let me share a photo which I took for tomorrow's recipe so that you can see a couple of ready-to-fill butternut squashes in the background.)
- Add roasted squash flesh, bechamel sauce, nutritional yeast and lemon juice into the large pan with cooked leeks.
- If you wish to use spices add them also into the mixture and mix them all.
And your Roasted Winter Squash sauce is ready. It tastes even better when you let it rest a while.
The rest is entirely up to your imagination. You can use this sauce plain as it is or you can choose to do I as usually do. I love to enrich it even further by adding different types of whole grains or pasta and green leafy vegetables.
As whole grains I use organic brown rice, buckwheat, sorghum, farro, millet etc.
As pasta I pick organic whole wheat pasta or protein-rich lentil, pea, chickpea pasta types.
As for the vegetables I add..
I don't precook the fresh and thin leafy ones such as spinach. I just cut them into small pieces. They are easily cooked in the oven when baked with the sauce.
But, if I am going to use a vegetable with thicker leaves such as cabbage, I firstly cut them into small pieces and then steam or boil until softened before mixing it into the sauce.
When written in detail as I just did it may have sounded a bit complicated but you'll see how easy and practical it is after seeing my upcoming posts with various examples. All you need is your Roasted Winter Squash Sauce, whatever you have in your pantry and some imagination.
Regarding how many servings you'll have with this sauce, I am unable to give you an exact number for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the sizes of the squashes vary. And secondly, if you choose to add some vegetables and grains or pasta into the sauce the number of servings increase.
To give you a general idea.. Using 6 halved squashes you end up with 6 servings as a start.
After that I am usually left with 4 - 6 additional servings.
About how to serve the leftover sauce.. You can stuff it into some other vegetables. Roasted red or yellow peppers work and taste great.
Another idea is to mix it with some pasta and veggies and bake in the oven.
As I previously said I'll be posting many such examples next days.
The first one will be tomorrow.
Let's remain in touch :)
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